The Desperation of Rick Santorum

One of the major losers in the Republican presidential primary is Rick Santorum. He has garnered almost no attention in spite of the media including him in debate after debate—note that the press only excludes one legitimate candidate regularly, Gov. Gary Johnson, the only libertarian in the race. Santorum has built his entire campaign on flogging a dead horse. He's trying to attract fanatical fundamentalists to his campaign.

There are several problems with this. First, Santorum thinks he can win over the fundamentalist vote but he has a problem shared with Romney. In the eyes of Christian fundamentalists Mr. Santorum is NOT a Christian, but a Catholic. Fundamentalists hate all religions that are not part of their sect. The dyed-in-the-wool Southern Baptist might tolerate a Pentecostal as a Christian—barely—but he won't cotton to no Catholic or Mormon. Why the Book of Revelation, clearly indicates—as clear as mud at least—that Catholicism is the Church of the Anti-Christ.

Santorum is trying hard to give the fundamentalists someone to hate more than Catholics. the Religious Right coalition, mainly fundamentalists with a tiny smattering of the magic-underwear Mormons and a minority of Catholics, is only held together by one thing today—a common hatred of gay people. Sure the conservative movement today is vehemently anti-immigrant—of course, they pretend they are only against "illegal" immigration, but the evidence shows otherwise—but Catholicism is only avoiding collapse in America because of immigrants. And the Mormons have found that uneducated Hispanic immigrants are often prime candidates for their normally vane attempts at convincing people that the con man Joseph Smith was some sort of prophet. So anti-immigrant hatred doesn't hold the Religious Right together the way scapegoating gay people can.

The other problem of the Religious Right is that American fundamentalism is in a state of advanced decay. Most fundamentalist churches are losing members. The percentage of Americans who claim to be members of one of these ignorant sects is going down. And young Christians in these churches are pretty much disgusted by their elders. Not only are they not attracting much in the way of new blood, but they are losing their own young to "the world," as these cultists put it.

Santorum, however, has nowhere else to go. He's a nobody in a field of morons, bigots, and Know Nothings—with the exception of Gary Johnson. And the only horse he's got for his pathetic bandwagon is the dead one. So flog it he must, even if he looks ridiculous doing so.

Santorum's latest act of desperation was at a so-called "Values Voter Summit," a klavern of the Religious Right where Republicans gather to spew venom, spit hatred, and fantasize the good old days of lynchings, witch burnings, and heresy trials. This klavern included all the conservative candidates that suck up to the fundamentalists, including their fellow fundamentalist Ron Paul. They do, of course, follow the lead of the media and exclude Gary Johnson, not that a non-bigot like Gary would win any support there.

Santorum used his appearance at the klavern konference to lie to the attendees. Mind you, lying doesn't upset these people, their entire political agenda depends on it. But Santorum's lie is so obviously false that it shows how desperate he is.

Recently, as most informed people know, the so-called Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy was abolished and the American military entered the modern world, much to the horror of the Bible-beating bigots. Soldiers no longer have to fear expulsion from the military simply for being gay. This brought up a question from some military chaplains. Given that it no longer an offense to be gay in the military, and given that gay marriage is legal is some states, what may chaplains do in regards to same-sex marriages?

The Pentagon issued a directive stating that if the chaplain is in a state with marriage equality, and if he wishes to do so, he may perform a same-sex marriage. But the directive clearly said, "a chaplain is NOT required to participate in or officiate a private ceremony if doing so would be in variance with the tenets of his or her religion or personal beliefs." That is pretty clear.

Santorum, however, got up and told the values klavern that the directive says the complete opposite. He said that Obama "has instructed his military chaplains to marry people in direct contravention—marry gays and lesbians—in direct contravention to the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage in federal law as between a man and a woman. So not only did the President not defend the law, he has now instructive people in the military to break the law."

There are two lies contained in this short sentence—clearly if Santorum is going to be the darling of the Values klan he will have to learn how to pack more lies into one sentence—if he's going to compete with the likes of Maggie Gallagher or Jennifer Morse.

The first lie is the obvious one: the President did NOT instruct chaplains to perform same-sex marriages. Obama is still too cowardly to announce he supports marriage equality. The directive from the Pentagon merely says that chaplains MAY participate in such ceremonies if they wish to do so but that no one is required to participate.

Secondly, if a chaplain feels that participation is the moral thing to do, the odious Defense of Marriage Act does NOT make his participation illegal. Is Santorum really saying that he wants the law to chain chaplains down from participating in legal civil ceremonies, or private religious ones?

There is one bit of honesty in that statement as well. Santorum admits the DOMA "defines marriage in federal law." Ron Paul continues to lie about that claiming that he supports DOMA but also wants marriage defined by the states. DOMA does create a federal definition of marriage, for the first time in American history. And it restricts the federal government from recognizing valid marriages performed in the individual states UNLESS it meets the federal standard. But it does not restrict the actions of ministers, priests, rabbis or chaplains of any faith.

And the real hypocrisy here is that while repeal of DADT doesn't strip chaplains of their right to choose what ceremonies to participate in, Santorum's interpretation of DOMA does. Santorum says such participating is a violation of federal law. So it is Rick Santorum who is assaulting the religious freedom of chaplains, not Obama. There is plenty to bitch about when it comes to Obama, but this isn't one of the issues.